The present invention relates to data processing by digital computer, and more particularly to XML (Extensible Markup Language) and other markup languages.
XML is a markup language for marking data with markup tags that indicate what data is being described. For example, the word “phone” placed within markup tags could indicate that the data that followed is a phone number.
XML is commonly represented as textual data. The textual data is generally encoded in a Unicode format, for example, in UTF-8 format.
An alternative approach is to represent XML as binary data. The binary approach is referred to as binary XML.
One binary XML technique is the Compact Binary XML (CBXML) technique proposed by IBM (International Business Machines) of Armonk, N.Y. A description of CBXML has been published at: http://www.w3.org/2003/08/binary-interchange-workshop/presentations-ibm-cbxml.pdf.